Not directly relevant but I just discovered CachyOS for my AYN Loki and it’s pretty fuckin awesome. I hope we retain some non-immutable options for those of us who want to heavily customize our experiences with these devices. It was hard to find something I could just run syncthing and some standalone emulators on. I don’t want valve and libretro in complete control of what I do and do not do on my handheld linux or not - and it could very easily go that way with the popularity of immutable distros. Maybe I’m just paranoid. I dont know.
I just installed cachyOS last week, and quite like it. Im experienced with Debian and rpm based OSes but haven’t used Arch before, but so far this OS has made it pretty straight forward.
I’m not so sure Valve is the right maintainer for the core desktop. The Deck works well, but mainly what Valve is maintaining is the Game Mode feature and Proton. Everything else is largely better handed off to a bigger group.
Tbf, I think people are hoping for mainstream SteamOS as the “safe supported option”, because they are afraid of an “unintuitive experience” (This is basically a Linus Sebastian demographic problem).
Personally, I think that’s a bad judgement call (as platforms like Bazzite have already proven that an official SteamOS environment isn’t required to have a good time gaming and using your machine), but I guess that means there’ll be even more excitement once that releases.
I’m guessing that once we get to 5% excluding console-like systems like Steam Deck, we’ll see it start to explode. That didn’t happen for macOS, probably because of the cost of the hardware, whereas Linux can be installed on whatever you have.
I have 4 computers, only gaming one is still running Windows, other 3 were moved to Linux few years ago when Microsoft started with forced online accounts bs because I couldn’t be bothered dealing with stupid bypasses. Two are running Ubuntu, one is running Fedora. Those are never going back to Windows.
I wonder if Valve will ever release an official desktop version of SteamOS? I think Linux adoption would really increase fast if there was a gaming focused Linux desktop distribution with the support of an established company. But does Valve want that? A full featured operating system is a lot to maintain and provide support for.
I think what could really drive adoption is if computers with Linux pre-installed was more easily accessible. Just boot the computer, choose which DE you want to install and then it’s done. It doesn’t need to be SteamOS. Just any good distro will do.
Who else has an incentive to do so other than Valve? Even when you buy a pre-built with Windows today, those things are subsidized by bloatware that’s already installed on the machine.
They don’t need to, just give them 3 screenshots and ask which they want. Show KDE, GNOME, and whatever the distro wants as the third. Maybe include some bullet points below each explaining what they are (pick one from the last two):
KDE - familiar, extensible
GNOME - modern, minimalist
Cinnamon/Budgie/MATE - something in the middle
XFCE/LXQT - super lightweight for older systems
Maybe select one by default that the OEM likes, but showing the option helps nudge them toward the idea that this is a flexible system.
Bazzite offers KDE or GNOME, and in the menu mentions KDE is what is used in SteamOS.
I installed Bazzite on my HTPC recently. It was the worst install process I’ve seen in over ten years of using Linux. I shall enumerate the problems I had:
The image is weirdly large, it’s like 9GB in size. It takes awhile to download and a weirdly long time to write to a USB stick.
Once written, you boot the image, and GRUB has the options to Install Bazzite or Test Media And Install Bazzite. By default, Test Media is selected. It always fails this test.
If you use the typical non-live environment image, the scaling is tiny on a 4k monitor, and there’s no way to adjust this.
If you use the live environment image (in beta at time of writing), it might just lock up. I had that happen twice just while clicking through the Anaconda installer.
The Anaconda installer, which I think they inherited from Fedora, was I think designed by one of the contrarian idiots who work for Gnome. There’s a DONE button up in the far upper left hand corner of the screen that sometimes acts as a back button, sometimes acts as a forward button. You have to move the mouse from the top corner of the screen to the center of the screen a lot, for no reason. The top-left corner of the screen is a dumb place to put a DONE button because most languages read top to bottom, left to right, the DONE button is where a START button should go.
There isn’t a simple way to tell it “put / on this drive, put /home on that drive.” There’s an automatic installer which will do god knows what…fail, most likely. There’s a “custom” partition dialog which I couldn’t make heads or tails of, and then there’s a “custom advanced” one that lets you set the size and position of each partition to the byte. Doing it this way apparently REQUIRES you to not only set up a /boot/efi partition, but also a /boot partition separate from /root.
If you’re in the habit of putting /, you know, operating system and software, on one drive, and /home on another drive, you have to learn from osmosis that part of Bazzite’s immutableness means that there is no /home, there’s a /var/home symlinked to /home.
And if it doesn’t randomly lock up, you’ve got Bazzite installed!
Bazzite markets itself as a newbie friendly Linux. They’ve got that configurator on their website that gives you a little Cosmo quiz about what system you have, what desktop you want etc. which is good! That is good user friendly design. But the actual software you get rattles like a Chrysler. How many noobs are going to bounce right off that?
That’s really too bad. I’ve heard great things about Bazzite, and it’s what I recommend when someone wants SteamOS.
That said, that’s a bit different from what I’m talking about. I’m suggesting OEMs ship a pre-installed Linux desktop, and users are presented an option on setup about which DE to use. So all that would change is enabling one and not the others, but they’d always be present. After install, you could switch between them if desired without messing with the package manager.
I personally use openSUSE (leap on server, tumbleweed on desktop, Aeon Desktop on laptop), and their installer is solid, but I haven’t tried it on a 4k monitor (worked fine on 1440p). Unfortunately, I don’t recommend my distro of choice because it’s not popular enough to have a good newb support network, whereas that’s basically Bazzite’s core demographic.
I don’t recommend Arch forks as a rule, unless it has fantastic support from the maintainers (e.g. SteamOS curates updates). It’s going to by break eventually, and it’s going to require manual intervention (probably minimal), and users will get mad. Maybe it’ll be fine for 6 months or a year, but it will break eventually.
That’s much less likely with something built on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, or OpenSUSE. Those all have solid testing and upgrade rules, unlike Arch, which is basically “works on my machine.” I used Arch for years until I got tired of the random breakage, and now I’m on Tumbleweed which has far less breakage and stays reasonably close to Arch package versions.
My first recommendation is either Linux Mint (I prefer Debian edition) or Fedora, because those have good new user experiences and aren’t super opinionated like Ubuntu.
At least some of the problems I reported about Bazzite are inherited from Fedora. Bazzite didn’t create Anaconda.
Fedora has the problem of being generally fine, but most of the world for the last decade has been targeting Ubuntu as THE Linux distro, so there’s a lot if Git repos out there that don’t include instructions for Fedora. Way fewer things are packaged in rpm rather than deb. I’ve never seen Linux Mint kernel panic unless I was fucking around with the video drivers, I’ve seen Fedora kernel panic.
The main reason I’m using Fedora right now rather than Mint is Mint tends to have an older codebase, and we’re at a point in PC technology where things like wayland offer support for video and graphics stuff that don’t work well under X11. like my 1440p ultrawide 144Hz monitor sitting next to a 1080p 60hz side monitor. Fedora KDE has it ready to go, Mint Cinnamon does not.
there’s a lot if Git repos out there that don’t include instructions for Fedora
For new users, if it doesn’t exist in the repos, you’ve gone too far. Don’t look for RPMs or debs, look for your distros package, and failing that, look to add a repo tons of people online recommend for whatever you’re using (e.g. RPMFusion IIRC). The vast majority of what you want will be there.
If it’s something you really can’t live without, ask on the forums for your distro, and wait until you get multiple answers from different people saying the same thing. Give it a few days too.
Installing from source isn’t a bad thing, I do it all the time. But a lot of people will trust some random post on SM and then complain that it doesn’t work or broke their system or something (see LTT’s video where he uninstalled his DE by trying to install Steam). Don’t install from source or random RPMs/debs until you’re comfortable tracking down what dependencies you need and are able to read scripts to make sure nothing funky is going on. Many posts online will be outdated, and with Linux getting more attention, malware is a growing concern.
Mint tends to have an older codebase
Does Mint still not use Wayland?
Having an older codebase is generally good for new users, since the software tends to be more tested and more people will know the workarounds. Newer software will have different issues, so be careful chasing the latest and greatest if you’re not comfortable sifting through logs to figure out what happened.
For new users, if it doesn’t exist in the repos, you’ve gone too far.
I don’t think this holds up under scrutiny. Theoretically sure, installing using your distro’s package manager is the beginner skill, compiling from source is the advanced skill.
The reality is, people transplanting from Windows often own hardware they want to continue to use, that require software that isn’t in a distro’s package manager. For me, this included a DisplayLink docking station, an Epson printer and a SpaceMouse. For some, it will include gaming keyboards or mice, stream decks, who knows what else. A lot of times, there are folks making open source software for these things, but they don’t package them. So you end up on Github as a beginner looking for the thing to make your thing work.
As you migrate into the ecosystem, you start buying hardware that is well supported by the Linux ecosystem, that problem starts to fade away.
by rpm vs deb, I wasn’t meaning downloading individual files…though I’ve done that. DisplayLink offered their driver as a .deb. At first, that Epson printer only issued a .rpm, and I had to use Alien to install a .rpm on a Linux Mint computer. With time, they offered a .deb, and eventually the printer was just natively supported by CUPS. I meant, I find that the Debian/Ubuntu repos (the dpkg/APT system that uses .deb files) have more stuff in them than Fedora’s repos (the DNF package manager that uses .rpm files) do.
Does Mint still not use Wayland?
When I built my current PC, Wayland support in Mint Cinnamon was “We’ve just now added it, it doesn’t work worth a damn but you can try it.” They’re coming along, but they’re behind.
Is an older codebase generally good for new users? The first distro I installed on an x86 PC was Mint Cinnamon 17. Quiana. On a then brand new Dell Inspiron laptop. For about 6 months, the kernel that shipped with the OS didn’t support the laptop’s built-in trackpad. I had to manually update the kernel through Mint Update for the trackpad to work. There’s problems at the bleeding edge, but there’s problems at the trailing edge as well.
Having played with it for a little while now that I’ve got it installed…I think it’s alright for a mostly or entirely gaming machine. I wouldn’t want to use it, or any immutable distro, as my main computer.
I’ve attempted to stay out of the trendy distro of the month club, remember Garuda? Remember Peppermint? Remember Endeavour?
I switched to Bazzite as my daily driver and won’t be switching distros or going back to Windows.
I ran into an issue during install with my main drive previously having BitLocker. Had to clear the drive with a live USB installer. Had another issue with secondary LUKS drive auto-mounting, but was able to address it through the GUI.
Other than that it has been a magical experience. I do full-time work/school on the system.
Yup, I had this exact experience. Installed Bazzite because it was a “gaming OS”. Had trouble just installing any non-gaming apps, or looking up guides to do so. Even gaming wasn’t perfect.
Installed CachyOS, and yes, there are annoyances, but also a nice path to fix them. It’s both a good gaming OS, and a daily driver for casual use.
You forgot the part where the installer fails just right before the end. Every time.
Had this occuring on both my laptop and someone else’s that I was trying to install Bazzite to, which resulted in installing Fedora on their laptop instead (and back to EndeavourOS on my end), and even Fedora’s new installer errored out too. Thankfully the OS was working though.
I am suspecting your 6th point for that one, which even if it wasn’t I consider it a colossal failure on their part because it is NOT TELEGRAPHED AT ALL. I shouldn’t have to stumble upon random forum posts to learn about it, come on.
I had one fail fairly early, giving me a cryptic message because apparently it couldn’t cope with how I’d set up the partitioning.
I’ve had a Linux Mint install fail because it couldn’t cope with a BIOS setting, the error message gave a plain English explanation “it’s probably the XMBT (or whatever acronym) setting in the BIOS, see this page on the Ubuntu wiki for details:” and it gave a hyperlink, because the installer runs in a live environment, it had a copy of Firefox ready to go, AND it gave a QR code so you could easily open that link on a mobile device. THAT’S how it’s done.
I tried to go with Bazzite on my wife’s old PC. Fuck knows what happened, but I could not get it to recognise that I’d downloaded the image with the Nvidia drivers built in.
Ended up giving up and rolling Kubuntu. I know Kubuntu and like it. And it works beautifully. Back in the world of RDR2 now, and loving it.
Yeah, that is nice. I won’t recommend EndeavorOS or any other Arch installer/derivative for other reasons (IMO, every Arch user should do the official install process once or twice to have a better shot at fixing stuff later), but I do like that UX.
I wish more distros did it. My distro (openSUSE) does something similar, but I also don’t recommend it because the community isn’t all that good for new users IMO.
That tracks since I left Arch about 5 years ago, maybe a little longer, and I used it for at least 5 years.
I used it through the /usr merge which broke nearly everything, and for a few years of stability afterward. But even when it was super stable, there were still random issues a couple times each year. It wasn’t anything big (I’ve been a Linux user for 15 years or so), but it did require knowing what to do to fix it (usually documented clearly on the Arch homepage). This was especially true for Nvidia updates. After switching to openSUSE Tumbleweed, most of those went away, and even the Nvidia breakage seemed less frequent, and if something broke, I could easily snapper rollback and wait for a fix, whereas on Arch I had to fix things because going back wasn’t an option (I guess you could configure rollbacks if you had that foresight).
I just took a look, and it looks like manual intervention is still a thing. For example, the June 21 Linux firmware change required manual intervention. There were others over the last year, depending on the packages you use or your configuration.
That’s totally fine for Linux vets, but new users will have issues eventually. In don’t even recommend my distro, which solves most of those issues, because new user support isn’t there. The main reason I left was because I wanted to switch to btrfs (for snapshot rollbacks), and Tumbleweed had that OOTB so I gave it a shot.
The main reason I left was because I wanted to switch to btrfs (for snapshot rollbacks), and Tumbleweed had that OOTB so I gave it a shot.
This is precisely why I went with Tumbleweed as well. I wanted a rolling release distro because having initially gotten into Linux via Ubuntu back in 2007, I didn’t really like the “upgrade twice a year to keep up to date with new features” method. It felt really cumbersome back then, as a regular distro upgrade often brought problems with it.
When I looked into other features I wanted, I discovered Snapper and I was all “that’s the one for me!”
I don’t even remember my progression. I do remember what first piqued my interest though. A guy came from BUIT (Barn-och-ungdoms IT enhet), which no longer exists, and he was troubleshooting some IT stuff at my school back in 2003. Being the nosy and tech-interested bratty nerd that I was, I hovered around the guy. He was super nice, and had no problem with my prodding questions about his laptop, which was running Red Hat Linux. He explained in simple terms what exactly that meant, and it stuck with me.
Then, years later when I found out about Ubuntu (at the library I think) and the fact that they sent out LiveCDs I was like “Yes please!” and the rest is history. I didn’t use Linux for many years, between having hardware that didn’t play nice with it, and just not feeling like it. Then the other year I went back to Linux and been using it since.
Every so often I boot into Windows to do some texture work in Substance Painter, but I don’t think that’s going to last. I’m very keen on trying Armor Paint, and if I like the workflow there I might as well wipe Windows entirely.
For me, I went to the local community college in high school, and an old guy was in my Java class and gave me a FreeBSD CD. I installed it and played around with it for a year or two, but still used Windows. When I went to uni, I got an Ubuntu CD on campus and installed it on my rental, and later that year the Windows XP install had issues but Ubuntu was fine, so I switched.
Now, if only I could run Linux on my work PC.
I had that at my last job, but my current one uses macOS. At least it’s close enough to Linux on the CLI…
I’m stuck on Windows 11 at work. It’s not a bad laptop, but Windows is insanely slow. Opening the commandline isn’t instant. Explorer takes well over a second to open. It’s like treacle.
Three options is too many? If one is already selected, you can just click through without thinking. Windows already does that stupid “setting up your PC” crap, and this would be far faster.
Sure. If you have all three options be properly configured, it shouldn’t matter too much which you pick. The point is to make it apparent that you can change stuff, if you want.
Do you know why Mac is successful? Because they have extremely few options. You basically have 3 laptops to choose from. That’s not 3 software options, that’s basically 3 hardware options.
I don’t think that’s why. I think it’s more the features that work with the iPhone that are selling Apple laptops. If you want to use iMessage or iCloud between your phone and computer, you need both to be from Apple. That, plus the better performance and battery life of the M-series is more the cause of increased market share, not the single desktop offering.
That is exactly why they are successful, wayyyyyyy before iphones even existed. People don’t have to think about anything. I think I’m going to leave this conversation.
Looking at market share stats, macOS market share is stagnant up until 2010-2015 or so, when it jumps from 6% to 12% or so, and that’s also about when iPhone became dominant. They’re currently around 15-17%, probably because the M1 series is so much better than x86 alternatives, so if you don’t need gaming or anything, it’s a great option! That wasn’t true before the M1.
If it’s all up to the one choice, why didn’t they take off before the 2010s? macOS has been remarkably the same since pretty much forever, unlike Windows, which changes a lot each release.
I think the “friendly” distros like Linux Mint with built-in driver detection/management and pretty broad package repositories (surfaced as an “App Store”) are probably to the point where many normal people could use them, without significantly more technical chops than Windows. Particularly as a gaming rig where you basically just need Firefox, LibreOffice and Steam.
The issue with that is, people have no idea what these “choice” even mean. SteamOS is SteamOS, Windows 11 is Windows 11, MacOS is MacOS, but Linux is a big list. If pushing adoption is the key purpose, the manufacturer need to pick one that they believe is reliable and in active development. Just one. All these editions will very likely cause choice paralysis, which lead to people deem it as “too complicated”.
Its become abundantly clear to me over the past few years that Linux is in place where, to get significant share it needs to have a major figurehead. Imagine if all ThinkPads suddenly were only available with Lenovo’s own fork. That kind of thing.
Unfortunateoy, that’s kinda the opposite of Linux ethos, and not necessarily likely to make Lenovo much money.
So the best we can really hope for at this point is a company with the brand awareness of Valve pushing SteamOS into the mainstream. People who play games know and generally trust Valve, so people (like my wife) who are on the fence, or who just need their computer to work without needing too much faffing, could likely trust SteamOS in a way they wouldn’t necessarily trust Bazzite or CachyOS.
I’d guess Valve wants whatever makes more games work on Linux so that their Steam Deck works better and is more compatible.
And that means the most important thing is Linux desktop adoption by game developers so they make more native games. So somewhat ironically, I don’t think SteamOS would be as high a priority as other distributions, since it focuses on players instead of developers.
A lot of games received their ports during the Steam Machine era, used outdated technologies like DirectX to OpenGL translation, and never got updated, so it’s not surprising unfortunately.
I can attest that SteamOS does work on my rigs that are AMD gpu/cpu. It actually works great. I haven’t had one single issue. But I don’t do multiplayer games either.
I think it will continue to rise. People are updating their rigs all the time. Whenever they update their rig they’ll have to ask themselves whether they want to continue with Windows on their new rig, or try with something new.
Most will stay on Windows of course, but some don’t. And those who switch to Linux are likely not returning to Windows (for gaming at least).
Yeah, for me personally, I’ve got one or two devices that see irregular use that are linux now, but my main rig is still windows and will continue to be so, since I have a number of friends on xbox that I can get more cross play for via gamepass But since I’m currently boycotting microsoft, and don’t know how much longer friends will stick with xbox given their general market decline, and given all the stability issues with win11 lately due to an increase of AI code usage, and all the everything… It might be a matter of time
I think it will continue to rise. People are updating their rigs all the time. Whenever they update their rig they’ll have to ask themselves whether they want to continue with Windows on their new rig, or try with something new.
The vast majority of this increase is from people playing on Steam Decks, which run on Linux, not from people switching to Linux on their PCs.
If it continues to rise, this is the reason. The general public is less and less into using a desktop at all as time goes on, much less running, and much less changing to, an extremely niche operating system on one.
EDIT: The previous sentence is actually more of the reason, upon further reflection. The total number of people playing on desktops period is falling, and the vast majority of desktops are Windows, so non-Windows OSes will comparatively gain ‘market share’ as that happens, even if their numbers don’t change at all.
Actually, the raw number percentage shows that the increase is due to Mint, Ubuntu, and Bazzite. Maybe people are installing Bazzite on their Deck but likely not the other two.
I want to say that I’ve been helping people get onto Mint and Bazzite. Going to pat myself on the back for contributing what little I can to grow this awesome community
I switched from Windows to Bazzite on my main rig 2 weeks ago. Likely won’t go back to Windows for gaming as I’ve had pretty much no issues with Bazzite.
I did also get a Steam deck recently, so anecdotally, both above answers are right.
The vast majority of this increase is from people playing on Steam Decks
I believe this is incorrect. The Steam survey break down GPUs by description and the Deck’s GPU appears in the results as “AMD Vangogh”, which only accounts for 0.39% of respondents. That implies that the vast majority of survey respondents using Linux are actually on PC, not the Deck.
That’s not true. You can see on Steam Hardware Survey what OS people are running, and SteamOS only makes up 27% of Linux users on Steam, so the vast majority are on regular PCs.
Certainly interesting to look at the fastest-growing distros: Ubuntu (the well-known, popular option), Bazzite (the gaming-marketed one), Freedesktop (someone else can answer this for me), and CachyOS (the side-gaming one? Not quite a gaming OS but very good at it)
The vast majority of the increase, is what I said. In other words, I’m saying it wouldn’t be nearly at the 3% mark without those users, and with over a quarter of all Linux users coming from the Steam Deck userbase, that is, in fact, true.
Without the Steam Deck there’d be 27% fewer Linux users. So while that would indeed mean Linux wouldn’t yet be 3% of the total Steam userbase, I think you will find that 27% is not the majority.
GamingOnLinux aggregates this data in a nicer way and as you can see there, the total Linux market share has gone from <1% five years ago to the 3% it is now. If that increase was mainly thanks to the Steam Deck, it would have to make up more like 75% of the Linux userbase rather than only 27%.
Instead, as others have pointed out, SteamOS’s share has actually gone down rather than up, which is a natural consequence of the Steam Deck being relatively old now so fewer are being sold.
Looking a bit further into it, a bug report on the GZDoom GitHub page titled “Project management” was opened that gave a little more detail noting issues with the lead of GZDoom pushing untested code, using an LLM to write code and hiding “not insignificant changes in commits, which has people worried that you’ll randomly rip out features that they rely on”. In reply, the project lead simply said “Feel free to fork the project under a” (yes, that really all they said).
A later comment before the bug report was locked points out the specific change in GZDoom that was made with ChatGPT.
Lately it feels like GenAI is gonna push FOSS projects and its maintainers to the breaking point. So much for this great future every AI vendor promised us 🙄
gamingonlinux.com
Najnowsze